News in brief

PM vows crackdown on 'mafia' crime after killing

The Croatian prime minister, Ivo Sanader, vowed yesterday to crack down on organised crime after the killing of a young woman in Zagreb outraged the country. He fired two ministers and the police chief hours after the killing on Monday of the 26-year-old-daughter of Zvonimir Hodak, a high-profile lawyer. Ivana Hodak was shot twice in the head in her home in the capital, near police headquarters. Sanader linked the killing to mafia-style murders. Croatia is in negotiations with the EU for membership of the union by 2011, and fighting crime and corruption is one of the conditions for joining .Associated Press in Zagreb

Weapons ship ransom said to be cut to $8m

A man on a hijacked ship carrying tanks and heavy weapons said yesterday that the ransom had been reduced to $8m (£4.6m). It was unclear if he was officially speaking for pirates holding the vessel. The man identified himself as Jama Aden and answered the satellite telephone of the pirates' normal spokesman, Sugule Ali. "There are high hopes we will release the ship within hours if they pay us US$8 million," Aden told the Associated Press. "The negotiations with the ship owners are going on well." The pirates originally demanded $20m. Six US warships are surrounding the vessel. Associated Press in Mogadishu

Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin

He has been featured trucking, fishing without a shirt on and tracking tigers, now Vladimir Putin is out on DVD teaching judo. The Russian prime minister, who is a black belt in the martial art,presents an instructional judo DVD called Let's Learn Judo with Vladimir Putin and is seen throwing an opponent to the mat several times. The film also shows a black-clad Putin talking about the history and philosophy of judo. Putin, a former judo champion of St Petersburg, his home city, has said the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to take some martial arts lessons. Associated Press in St Petersburg

Subatomic research trio share Nobel physics prize

Three Japanese-born researchers have won the Nobel prize for physics for showing how the rules of nature emerge from a breakdown in order at the microscopic scale. Yoichiro Nambu, 87, a US citizen, of Chicago University, was awarded half of the 10m Swedish kronor (£810,000) prize for his work on spontaneously broken symmetry, which underpins scientists' understanding of subatomic particles that make up matter. Makoto Kobayashi, 64, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation in Tsukuba and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, at Kyoto University, each won a quarter of the prize.Ian Sample